Lifter boosts tiny nation's hopes

John Benson, SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER

Published
4:00 am PDT, Wednesday, July 17, 1996

Marcus Stephen, one of the strongest little men in the world, holds a 330-pound barbell overhead, then releases it, sending it to the platform with a crash that shakes the walls and rattles the teeth of a handful of onlookers at the Sports Palace on Valencia Street.

The lift is not his personal best but not a bad effort for the 5-foot-3, 130-pound weightlifter, who had arrived in San Francisco the night before after flying more that 15 hours from the tiny South Pacific island nation of Nauru.

Stephen, 26, and two fellow weightlifters are Nauru's first-ever Olympic team - its entire Olympic team - and trained in the Bay Area for five days recently before heading to the Games in Atlanta.

For Stephen, who looks like a strong contender for a medal, going to the Olympics is no small feat.

He comes from an out-of-the-way place that offered little opportunity in the way of training facilities until recently. Nauru, which has just 7,000 inhabitants and a land mass of 8.2 square miles (one-sixth the size of San Francisco), was not part of the Olympic movement until joining as the 196th (and smallest) country last year.

Stephen feels the weight of his countrymen's hopes as he represents Nauru, which endured decades of occupation (by the Germans, British, Australians and Japanese) before gaining independence in 1968 from United Nations-Australian administration.

"Everyone knows the team is going to Atlanta," he says, in soft Australian-accented English. "The whole country's behind us. They expect big things. It's a big honor. I don't want to let people down. I'll be pretty nervous.

"But if the lifts go right," he says without a hint of braggadocio, "I'm in there for a medal, but I don't know what color."

Paul Coffa, director of Nauru's Olympic weightlifting program and a force in Australian weightlifting the past 25 years, says of Stephen: "He is very modest, but he's confident. That's the style of the whole island. They're shy people, but they've really gotten behind weightlifting. It's become their No. 1 sport."

Coffa started Nauru's weightlifting institute 18 months ago, and there are now 70 lifters and 18 sets of weights and platforms fully equipped. There also is a women's team that gets as much attention as the men's.

The island itself is a tropical paradise, where most people work for the government or the Nauru Phosphate Corporation, according to Stephen, an accountant by trade. He says Nauruans have a comfortable standard of living, and a pretty laid-back lifestyle.

"There's nothing to rush for," says Stephen. "We have "Island Time' - and you can usually take your time to do whatever you have to do."

Stephen started lifting weights in the mid-1980s while studying in Australia, where he earned a business degree from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Although relatively unknown on the world's athletic stage, Stephen is not the 1996 Olympics' version of the Jamaican bobsled team or the British ski jumper "Eddie The Eagle" Edwards, competitors who were celebrated for their spirit and the anomaly of their chosen sports.

"He's a world-class weightlifter," says Jim Schmitz, president of the U.S. Weightlifting Federation and proprietor of the Sports Palace. "There's no doubt about that."

Schmitz would know. He's a former head coach of the U.S. Olympic weightlifting team and trainer of a dozen Olympians and scores of national champions.

In fact, Stephen has exceeded the world record in the clean and jerk in the 59-kilogram class, making an official lift of 170.5 kilograms (375 pounds), one-half kilogram over the record, according to Coffa.

Stephen made the lift in January in the Nauru Independence Day tournament in front of internationally qualified judges. But because the competition wasn't one of the few events each year in which world records can be set (under the rules of the International Weightlifting Federation), his achievement will not be recognized. Which means that the Nauruan record is higher than the world record.

Stephen finished eighth in the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, but because Nauru was not then part of the Olympic family, he competed for Western Samoa, which granted him temporary citizenship.

In February, Stephen handily defeated the current world champion at 59 kilograms, the Greek lifter Leonidis Sabanis - and he did it in Greece in front of a throng of rabid and shocked partisans. Stephen totaled 292.5 kilograms (via a 125 snatch and a jerk of 167.5), defeating Sabanis by 10 kilograms.

If Stephen were lifting for the United States, he would be ranked No. 1 on the 1996 team and be among the best since the golden age of U.S. weightlifting more than 30 years ago.

Stephen's two teammates, Quincy Detenamo, 17, a student, and Gerard Garabwan, 22, a plumber, are also modest about their lifting. Detenamo will be the youngest lifter in Atlanta, according to Coffa.

Neither Detenamo, a 76-kilogram (167-pound class) lifter, nor Garabwan, at 91 kilograms (201 pounds), has reached Olympic standards. But because of a quirk in the qualifying rules of weightlifting, they are permitted to compete in Atlanta. Both are on their way to becoming world class in the junior ranks, with Detenamo totaling 250 kilograms and Garabwan 285.

Two days after the earlier workout, having bounced back from jet lag, Stephen and his teammates went through a heavy training session at the Sports Palace.

He tied his personal best in the snatch, 127.5 kilograms (280-1/4 pounds), only 5 kilograms off the world record, and lifted 155 kilograms in the clean and jerk (341 pounds).

Two lesser lifts didn't bother Stephen. He knows he's ready to medal - and there's a good chance the medal will be gold.